At last, I got around to completing my timelapse video for NECROMARKET, our crafting and trading adventure game. Unlike my LD43 video, this one is not narrated. That simply required too much time and thinking. :dizzy_face: I hope it brings some insight to those of you who might be interested.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roxihAjI8O0

 

Issues with the embedded video? Direct link here, and you can check out the timelapse videos of our previous LD games at my YouTube channel.

There... at last, the Post Mortem for Necromarket. Where to begin...

Necromarket: A Chronology

Hailing from The Netherlands and England, Ludum Dare begins at 3:00am and 2:00am for us, respectively. We defy this and just sleep whatever sleep we would normally be sleeping. For this jam, this meant we didn't get together on our Discord until 11:00am.

Day #1

At this point, the first day had started and we began brainstorming. Many ideas passed by, including: * You Are a Piñata and Have To Survive Beatings From Children, with your candy innards being a form of currency that you could spend on upgrades. * A Papers Please style game where you are St. Peter at the pearly gates and you have to judge incoming souls. * A Trolley Problem game where you have to decide which group of people to run over with your little tram, capturing their souls and being paid out and penalized at the end of a level.

Eventually, we decided on a crafting/trading game where you would imbue magical items with your own life force in order to sell them to adventurers. And thus, Necromarket was born.

I am the artist of our crew, so I started on figuring out what the perspective our our game would be. The location was to be a store with some kind of magical altar where the player would craft their items. I blocked out some basic ideas to start from.

We would be putting together the game space using Tiled so my goal was to make a spritesheet with 32x32 pixel tiles to put together the background with. For inspiration and ideas, I had a look at games like Moonlighter and Graveyard Keeper, as well as a memory of a previous jam game by @ellian called Good Impressions. I used the AAP-64 palette by Adigun Polack, and at the end of this first day, I had basic background tiles, non-animated and forward-facing player and customer sprites, and a bunch of items.

The items were an odd problem to tackle. I was making them as if they were inventory icons, but they would be used in the game world instead. This makes them a bit more abstract rather than having them be held naturally by the player, but since we have large objects like unicorns and imps, as well as small objects like potions and boots (compared to the size of the player's feet, the boot sprites are huge) it makes sense to keep them more conceptual rather than accurately scaled to the player character.

Day #2

This is where the "fun" began. It was animation time. Mistake número uno: I should really have planned this better, figuring out how many frames I would need in total beforehand, but instead I just started instinctively. First, the downward walk was a six-frame animation that I made without reference and just using previous experience. It came out a little janky, so I looked up a tutorial by Bandygrass that I had used as reference before for the other directions . I made my eight-frame sideways walking animation without questioning whether it was the right idea for this project.

My second mistake was sticking to this eight-framer even when I realized it would take a lot of time. You see, our player can use magic to change from an elderly grampa to a middle-aged man, a young adult and a child. So this multiplied the total frame-count for the player character by four. We wanted to make them look pretty unique, instead of just replacing the head, so each age category required a lot of modification.

Obviously, the best way to do this would've been a basic four frame animation for each direction. The character moves pretty quickly across the screen, and eight frames wasn't necessary. I did only make four frames for the upward animation, but I should have reduced the sideways animations at the same time. All in all I estimate about 75% of my time on day two was spent on animating the player character, resulting in a total of 104 animation frames.

Day #3

I had to go to work on Monday. Luckily, @daanvanyperen managed to wrangle his own work schedule so he could have some extra hours on the game. When I came home, he had thrown a number of temporary sprites onto the spritesheet that I then replaced with the final art. I pretty much directly took his quick sketches as a base for the final art, which sped up the process. After two days of gamejam and a day at work, I didn't feel super creative anymore.

Then came the realization: "Wait, the player needs to have animations where he's holding the items!" Arms up in the air. This means 208 animation frames for the player character. I asked myself, "Is it necessary to have this variation of the player character? We could just have the items hover overhead." I then answered myself, "Yes." I felt it was of sufficient importance to clearly show the items are held and carried by the player this way. I did get a little sloppy with my modifications here and there, but there was leeway there given the movement and pose would camouflage imperfections somewhat.

Then at some point, we had a completed entry. Sufficiently complete, anyway. The jam ended, and we submitted somewhere around the one-hour-left mark.

How 'bout Them Mistakes?

Like I mentioned above, a major pitfall this time was the amount of animation frames I ended up having to do due to not planning and not adapting. This was a big time sink. Because the player character took so much time to animate, I did not make any animations for the other characters in the game. The hag, Sam the postman, and the single customer all just slide onto the screen. It doesn't bother me much, it kind of has a cool vibe to be honest, but it makes things less lively.

Secondly, I neglected a big lesson I learned and even blogged about (see the last paragraph) from Ludum Dare 43. I did not go all-in on the core theme. @daanvanyperen even told me early on, when I only had a single player character sprite done, that the player character didn't look very wizardly. He literally reminded me of this big lesson I had learned, and I sort of brushed it aside because I subjectively liked the idea of him looking more like a craftsman. I did make the older variant look more like a necromancer with his little skull for a belt buckle, but that again was a direct result of Daan suggesting we need more skulls. The game is called Necromarket, after all!

And with that, the shop should look more like a magical dungeon of sorts. I think I let myself be influenced by looking at and Dungeon Keeper a little too much, and the walls just look like a generic medieval house. Where even are the magical bookcases?

If I could go back and pause time, I would... * Reduce player frames to 4 for each direction. * Re-theme the player character to be more of a wizard/necromancer. * Animate the other characters as well (only upward and downward directions necessary). * Have more customer variations, in-theme with the story. * Replace the generic background tiles with a more suitable magical workshop. * Make the enchanting altar more of a focal point and champion/landmark visual asset.

Jeez, Do You Even Like Anything You Made?

I do! Lots! Pretty much everything turned out sufficiently cool-looking and I am proud of my work. Lots of room for improvement doesn't mean that the work I did do was bad. I am even happy that I managed to do the number of animation frames, even if I regret doing so many.

But, looking at the art I did I am quite pleased with the little chicken coop animation. Out of everything, that and the little orb of vitality you can use instead of your own life force for crafting items are somehow the ones I probably enjoyed animating and now enjoy looking at the most. Oh, and the dragon heart. Man I like that dragon heart sprite so much.

That's A Wrap

I think I more or less ran out of things to say here. I will gladly answer any questions anyone might have, of course. Here in the comments, through Twitter or in the Ludum Dare discord; I am pretty easy to locate. Also, given that this Post Mortem is all about graphics, I will also drop my Pixelart Timelapse video here again, seeing as it's particularly relevant.

If you read all of this, thank you for reading! I hope it's been of some use, or at least provided an entertaining insight. Oh, and if you feel like having a go at the game, here's Necromarket!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roxihAjI8O0 Direct link here

Even though LD45 coincides with a bokbierfestival in my town that I haven't missed since I started attending it a decade or so ago, we'll once again be participating! This jam will be my tenth Ludum Dare, so I simply have to take part; who doesn't like a good round number? That said, I may just head out for a few hours and return slightly inebriated on Sunday afternoon. Multitasking! :beers:

The Suggestions

I didn't spend much time on these, but I think they leave enough freedom for wild interpretations while still providing direction. That last one is a analogy for the difference between Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen I once heard.

The Crew

We're never 100% certain of our team composition beforehand, but it's generally some kind of combination of these names. - :computer: @daanvanyperen | coding | twitter, github, website - :art: @flaterectomy | graphics | twitter, soundcloud, YouTube, website, portfolio - :musical_score: @meatmachine | music & audio | twitter, soundcloud - :warning: @troop | playtesting | twitch | festive cheer - :warning: MisterOizo | playtesting | LinkedIn

The Tools

• Artemis ECS framework (check it out!)
• libgdx-artemis-quickstart
• artemis-odb-contrib
• LibGDX, IntellIJ IDEA, Java
• Photoshop CS6, FL Studio, Audacity
• Chronolapse

 

For previous Ludum Dares I included some hard-to-read tips in some of the wallpapers I made. This time I will try and expand on them somewhat, with super-useful illustrations. To many of you, these tips will be lessons you've long learnt; if you're just starting out, pay close attention.

Let's get to it!

:one: After you settle on the concept of your game, figure out the absolute minimal requirements for it to work, and make that. You can keep extra features in the back of your head, sure, but get your core completed first.

:two: Remember: most players will only play your game for a few minutes, hook them in early.

:three: If you want your game to get rated, rate other games. Consider a 1:1 ratio; rate 20 games and you will likely receive 20 ratings yourself. Prioritize this over asking for ratings in a blog post.

:four: HTLML5/web games are more likely to get played and rated. Having to jump through hoops just in order to play your game will chase away a lot of people.

:five: Consider your game page on ldjam.com as part of your game. List the controls of the game there. Show some screenshots, but less is more if your game looks the same all the time. Five very similar-looking screenshots take up too much valuable real estate. Don't leave it empty either, though.

:six: You're making a retro 2D game? Cool! But if you rescale 2D art, rescale all assets by the same multiplier. Additionally, scale up x2 or x3, not x2.5 or anything else with a decimal point value, as that will distort your sprites.

That said, there naturally are exceptions to these rules. I have seen differently-scaled pixelart that somehow just worked. But those exceptions usually come from understanding the rules and parting ways with them intentionally in a well thought-out manner.

Now I am off to make a wallpaper that, this time, does not include these tips. :smile:

Carrying on the tradition, I took the Ludum Dare colours and the Ludum Dairy font and put together something simple. I think it's more or less in line with my previous LD44 and LD43 wallpapers (my LD42 effort was a little different stylistically), so if you enjoyed those then maybe these will work for you as well.

This time I made three variations in HD and 4k: one bright, one dark, and one minimal.

Here's an imgur album with all of them in there.

HD Wallpapers

Bright 1920x1080

Dark 1920x1080

Minimal 1920x1080

4k Wallpapers

Bright 3840x2160

Dark 3840x2160

Minimal 3840x2160

My slaughter is complete. :smile: Though at these numbers it's probably more of a genocide. How can we make genocide more fun? isn't really a question I want to be asking, but there are probably ways to make this slog, well... less of a slog.

I can't help but wonder how many Light/Dark variations were suggested. However, at what intangible measure of subtle difference do you determine whether something is or isn't a duplicate? I get it's no easy task to streamline this system as long as we have a ton of people throwing three suggestions each into a hat. It's then either: less suggestions per person or less people suggesting and the latter doesn't seem fair. That said, no one is forcing me to vote yes/no 3300 times, If everyone does 500 or 1000 we would probably still get a useful spread.

Just remember, in the end:

1. The Theme Always Sucks™
2. The Theme Doesn't Matter™

With just one week remaining I figured I would load up Twine 2 and dig up a previous text-based Ludum Dare warm-up named GRID GAME (a working title that simply stuck) and finish implementing the combat system I had begun last year.

With combat came hit-points and healing, and with healing came a method of crafting med-packs. Then some status-based text colouring to make things a little easier to read. All in all it's a very simple game, but I am happy with my efforts.

:video_game: You can play Grid Game here.

I'd love some feedback if you do happen to give it a go. Spelling and grammar error reports are also most welcome.

Ironically, with our Ludum Dare entries I am responsible for art rather than coding (with good reason too, I can barely code my way out of a soap bubble - this whole thing is the opposite equivalent to Programmer Art) so this warm-up was more a mindset thing than setting me up for graphics.

I was thinking of partaking in Inktober too, perhaps that will get my doodle juices flowing, wrong as it sounds.

EDIT: Here's how it looks in Twine 2.

 

And all of a sudden, that's LD45 done and over with, and Bob completed. We ended up making a little game where you - Bob - are out - bobbing on the surface of the sea - needing to build yourself a raft and decorating it with the treasures from below. But beware your endurance levels, if you run out of energy in the water you'll drown!

🎮 ➡ Play BOB here (HTML5)

This gamejam wasn't without its issues. We started late and technical issues in the end meant we couldn't implement everything we wanted to. More on that in a post-mortem to follow. Additionally, I will also be posting my usual graphics timelapse video somewhere in the next two weeks or so.

This entry marks @daanvanyperen's 15th official Ludum Dare game (not counting warm-ups and Mini-Ludum-Dares), @meatmachine's 8th and my own 10th, so we're pretty pleased to have been consistently taking part and completing, at the very least, something playable. I hope you'll give Bob a go!

 

PIXELART TIMELAPSE

At last, I got around to putting together the timelapse video of my pixelart process for our LD45 entry BOB. In this video you'll see the art and animations of our game taking shape. As reference for my animations I often have a look at tutorials by Pedro Medeiros and Sandy Gordon, so be sure to check them out if you find yourself interested.

You'll also see the creation of various assets that did not end up making it into our game due to a lack of time. (Apparently the game has to work for it to be playable, so that meant less time for features - crazy!) I especially liked my shark sprite, which sadly ended up on the cutting room floor.

Anyway, here's the video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poEe9lhdnYk

Direct link here

And you can 🎮 PLAY BOB (HTML5) on our game page.

As tradition demands, I decided to put together a simple wallpaper for LD46. I made a clean version and one that includes some of the gamejam tips I wrote before, as well as dark/greyscale variations, all in both HD and 4k.

Let me know if you end up using any of these! :smiley:

:floppy_disk: See all variations in 4K and HD in this imgur album.

Bright HD with tips

Dark HD with tips

Dark greyscale HD with tips

 

 

As usual, we hopped on board of the jam roughly half a day after it began. Much brainstorming later, we still didn't know what to do. @daanvanyperen left for a little while, I shat out another disjointed idea in the meantime, and when he returned we just kind of started making that. Perhaps it will turn into something fun. We named it ASTRODRIFT.

There's not that much to show yet, but here's a little evolution of my astronaut.

Daan has been hard at work trying to make physics happen while I doodle space debris.

Tomorrow more things!

 

ASTRODRIFT is finished and has been submitted! We had a difficult start, not really feeling it and just muddling along, but we found our stride on Sunday and in the end we can be proud of what turned out to be a fun and fairly challenging game.

🎮 ➡ Play ASTRODRIFT here

In this game, you are a stranded astronaut, trying to find your way to an escape pod amidst the exploded remains of your spaceship. Using a tractor beam, you can pull yourself towards objects (and them towards you), but your space suit is flimsy and almost everything is sharp.

It's all about momentum and direction. And creative thinking may aid you in clearing a new path!

Now I am off to bed, and hopefully I won't have dreams of floating around the void of space.

 

Do you like pixel art? Do you like timelapse videos? Well, I happen to have both those things, and so I decided to cross the streams. This is how I slapped together the art for ASTRODRIFT in Photoshop CS6, with a brief moment of level design in Tiled sprinkled somewhere in there.

I also captured some (very poorly executed) gameplay at the end, so you can more clearly see how it all worked out. Mind you, do play ASTRODRIFT for yourselves so you can really see it in action. :smile: And if you do play the game, please leave us some feedback.

https://youtu.be/yoeRJPocob0 Direct link here

Next up I will try and wrack my brain over a post mortem. :thinking:

:face_palm: Whoops

Guess who didn't keep track of when Ludum Dare 47 would start? This guy. I've been so preoccupied with writing and recording weekly songs for my Song-a-Week 2020 project that I only just found that LD47 starts 1 day and 6 hours from now. 2020 being a very silly year in general also didn't help, I suppose.

:shrug: I.. Might Be In?

Normally I'd say we are in, but I wasn't alone in my general unawareness of the LD47 date. My usual partner-in-crime @daanvanyperen also had no idea, and unfortunately he has enough on his plate already for something this short-notice to throw at his weekend. The main problem here is that Daan is the programmer, and I am the graphics and occasional sound dude. I cannot code my way out of a mime's invisible box.

So there are two options. I could join a team to do graphics for. But I am not sure whether I will be able to fully commit yet, as I do have my previously mentioned weekly Song-a-Week 2020 entry to complete. I am currently weekly 39 songs into this project, so continuing that kind of means more to me than participating in LD47.

This then leaves somehow trying to make something on my own. I have played around with Twine 2 before, resulting in the epic Fight a Monster and the legendary Grid Game.

So, if anything, this graphics guy is going to make some form of text adventure this weekend.

:frame_photo: Wallpaper!

I do try to make a wallpaper each Ludum Dare, so I hastily put this together just now. Thanks to @lilou-cormic for pointing out I've been neglecting my duties. :smile:

I made orange and blue versions. Check them out in this imgur album.

:thinking: In Conclusion...

If I end up with a finished entry, I have no doubt it will be my worst-scoring entry so far. And if I don't end up with an entry at all, well... see you next year?

 

 

Aaand that's about enough of day one for me. Somehow working on my own for the first time was both surprisingly similar and surprisingly strange, compared to previous Ludum Dares.

I had a comfortable start to my day, waking up at around 07:30 and finding out the theme had landed on Stuck In A Loop. All in all a pretty good theme, making me abandon my usual the theme always sucks mantra. I pretty quickly came up with three solid ideas, and ended up settling on the initial concept.

Then I stopped working on my entry and switched to the other deadline of the weekend: my ongoing song-a-week 2020 music jam. I won't go into it further, but if I have to make a choice between finishing that or my LD entry, I'm afraid it would be the music.

Back to LD! I am building my game, titled CONFINED, in Twine 2 because I am not a programmer and the little experience I have with that tool is my only chance of even finishing a game. I had to dig through older projects to remember some of the syntax, but things came back to me pretty quickly.

Given that it's a narrative-driven text-based game, I'm not getting to do much in the way of graphics this time around, which is my usual wheelhouse. Instead, and outside of the logo I came up with, the design parts were customizing some CSS elements to get away from the default Twine-look.

So far, this game is a fairly bog-standard text adventure. It's lacking in player agency, but hopefully I can turn that around tomorrow. I will also find out whether I can even put together the more engaging mechanics I had in mind for the middle of the game.

But now, before going to bed, I'm going to work on some non-LD music instead. :smile:  

 

Well this weekend sure rushed by quick. This morning and early afternoon was all about finishing my weekly song, entirely unrelated to Ludum Dare. But I am happy with how quickly I finished that, and it didn't take too big a bite out of my scheduled gamejamming.

What then followed was building a simple logic system in my game that I, as a logically-challenged artist, found quite difficult to put together. I think it's functioning okay now, but it doesn't have the depth I had originally envisioned.

Aside from that, I had to wrap my head around the story further. I have caught up to the point that I had figured out in my mind, and now I have to decide exactly how to conclude it all. This really is a familiar feeling for day #2 of any Ludum Dare for me. I hope I can turn it around successfully on day #3 again, but sine I am doing this on my own for the first time there are no real guarantees.

I keep wanting to go back through what I have coded so far and integrate everything in an elegant, more stripped down system, but there is that deadline tomorrow. I have to remember it's the result that counts, not my sloppy workflow and multiple instances of the same code, at times side-by-side.

 

Hopefully a night's sleep will make the narrative conclusion more apparent to me. And, even more hopefully, tomorrow's workday won't wear me out before I can continue with just 6 to 7 hours remaining in the jam.

Goodnight!

 

 

Anyone up for a somewhat interactive story? Relive the olden times of text adventures? Boy, have I got JUST the game for you.

:video_game: PLAY CONFINED (WEB)

After having a regular work day today I had to rush and finish the story. This is the part where I regret not being able to implement the parts where the player has more agency. That said, I am happy with how I managed to conclude all the narrative bits.

I'll reflect on this some more later. Now I need some sleep, and then tomorrow we play&rate!

 

🎮 PLAY CONFINED (WEB)

Many words, I decided to split this in two parts. A recap now, and a proper post mortem tomorrow.

Part 1: A Recap of Events

Thursday 18:00 CET: T Minus 32 Hours

"Ooh, it's October 1st. That means LD47 is going to happen soon. Let's see what date exactly, so @daanvanyperen and I can figure out our planning. Maybe I'll take the monday off from work."

Imagine my surprise when I found out LD47 was a lot less than two days away. Whoops. To complicate matters, my usual compatriot Daan, He Who Codes Our Games, was also blissfully unaware of this and unfortunately didn't have the time on the weekend.

Initially I thought I wouldn't partake at all, given that I do not possess any real coding ability. I have dabbled with Twine 2 before, making little text games that consist of little else than a few variables and some nested If Statements, and I used to mangle other people's code in LPC back in my MUD days, but that's pretty much it.

I am doing a year long song-a-week project as well, and needed to do most of the work on that on the weekend as well. I don't really know why I then chose to do a solo game, but I did.

Saturday 09:00 CET: I'd Better Wake Up

Ludum Dare 47 was already 9 hours underway when I woke up and checked my phone to see what the theme was. I contemplated ideas for a but, enjoying some coffee, and started a brain storm that yielded three workable ideas. 1. You are imprisoned in cryogenic stasis, interfacing with AIs to try and get out, looping through systems 2. A life simulator, going through stages of life, being prompted with choices. You reincarnate after death until you've done sufficient good in your life, and go to heaven instead. 3. You are stuck on a train, looping through the same train stations. The doors are blocked by various obstacles (a mother with a pram who only just got the baby to sleep, some shady figures up to no good, etc), and you must investigate a way to get out.

I opted for idea 1. Idea 3 was the first one I dropped. It felt like a decent text-adventure premise, but I had no real ideas here, and all I could think of was this feels like it should be a point-and-click adventure instead. Idea 2 was more mechanic-based than narrative-based, and I felt like writing a story, so that one got crossed out next.

I then began working on my song, hoping that a break from the game would give me fresh ideas when I returned. I laid down a the musical bones for a verse and chorus section, opting out of any guitar recording as that was too time-intensive.

Back to the game. I knew I wanted to have some kind of system-to-system navigation between the different AIs in the game, with some cheesy hack-the-mainframe back end to it as well. I started writing in Twine 2, going through the game chronologically. This part was slow, as I was still figuring out the characters and how the player needed to move back and forth.

By mid-evening, I mostly had the narrative intro complete, and put together a basic non-functioning UI for the back-end access of the game, and a logo for the game. Even with a text game, you need something eye-catching that you can use to show things off, so I wanted to have the UI mock-up and logo ready to post on social media and here on ldjam.com.

It was pretty basic, but surely I'd be able to turn it into something more complicated on Sunday. I'd better sleep.

Sunday ??:?? CET: It's Kind of a Blur

I worked on and finished my song throughout the morning and early afternoon, before continuing the game. It's a long-term project of mine that I would choose over finishing my LD entry, so it literally came first.

I spoke with Daan about the project for a while on Discord, bouncing some ideas around. He suggested a potential take on the game that I ended up including. Thanks Daan, even when I'm going at it solo you're improving things!

Back to the game. Logic systems are hard, man. I'm not sure I can do this. Maybe I should just quit. So I really want to give up? This is too complex for my little artist brain. Just push through.

Whelp. Not really more complex, but it works. Power levels are functional, things can be switched on and off depending on access, and the various AIs can be visited. Ugh, work tomorrow. I'd better sleep.

Monday 17:15 CET: Ohgodohgodohgod

I came home from work and simply needed to finish a minimal viable product. Just finish the story, and hopefully there's time left to improve the puzzle element. I wrote and wrote and wrote. I wracked my brain on how to put together a puzzle to pass one of the AIs and ended up just having it be a linear passing, no challenge. Not ideal, but I needed to finish the game.

I was still writing things in chronological order, not certain exactly how the story would end. I wrote a log entry for the player to find that one of the characters left. The pieces started to fall into place. I knew how to take Daan's suggestion and fit it into my initial idea.

I finished the story about 30 minutes before the deadline and the start of submission hour. Time to add some player agency? In 30 minutes? No. It was the familiar final-hour feeling that I felt at the end of each previous Ludum Dare. I was tired and took the time to prepare my game page, cover image, a quick blog post and published the game before any possible submission hour server issues could delay going to bed any further. I'd better sleep.

Check back in tomorrow for Part 2: How About That Post Mortem?

And... perhaps play CONFINED now?

 

 

🎮 PLAY CONFINED (WEB)

Check out Part 1 here.

Spoiler Alert - if you'd like to play Confined, you're better of reading this afterward instead.

Part 2: How About That Post Mortem?

What I Actually Made

Confined is a linear narrative text game divided in three stages, best (and obviously) described as the start, middle and ending.

The Start

The introduction where the player finds out they are imprisoned in a cryogenic stasis chamber for a crime they do not remember. The purpose of this ordeal is for convicted criminals to be rehabilitated in order to safely return them into society.

The player meets an AI named MAA (or the Mnemonic Assessment Algorithm) which is designed to assess whether the player remembers their crimes after they come out of rehabilitation. At this point the player learns that RA, the Rehabilitation Algorithm, is offline and MAA also doesn't work properly, rejecting the player's answers and returning them to rehabilitation no matter what the player says. This process runs three times (or more, if the player gives the same answer more than once) and is meant to frustrate the player. This part was a bit of a risk, normally you don't want to frustrate the player at all, but I felt that looping back in this manner was a solid reflection of the theme. Additionally, even though RA is offline, 10 years pass on each loop.

Once the player has given three different answers they are moved up to PEA, the Psychiatric Evaluation Algorithm designed to figure out of a prisoner is of sound mind. This AI, being more advanced and realizing there's something wrong, provides the player with access to the System Maintenance Network, a back-end system where various AIs can be switched on/off and accessed. The player has to figure out why the system is not functioning properly.

The Middle

By turning off MAA and/or PEA the player can redirect power to RA and talk with the AI. This starts some back-and-forths with PEA and leads to a dialogue with the Firewall, a watchdog AI that protects an archive named Data Storage. Once in Data Storage, the player stumbles upon a log entry written by the former warden of the facility. Here they learn about the facility and more about who they are and what has happened in the past. (I'll leave this vague in case you'd still like to play the game.)

The End

Upset by what they learned, the player is directed by PEA to PAA, the Prisoner Adjudication Algorithm that has the authority to release prisoners from their stasis. As dialogue progresses, the player is offered an alternative explanation as to who they are, and finally is offered a choice that leads to the end of the game.

The workings of the cryogenic rehabilitation system.

What I Wanted To Make

I had two main goals this jam: 1.) Write a non-linear narrative, and 2.) Code a clever logic system, what turned out to be the System Maintenance Network. Both of those goals were basically failures.

As mentioned above, this is a linear narrative game. That's not what I initially wanted. I was hoping to include branching story lines, giving the player more agency in where the story goes. Writing the story chronologically, I was often as lost as a player of the game might be. I didn't know where any of this was leading. At one point I intended to at least split the player's dialogue points in 'polite' and 'rude', and reflect that metric after you finish the game. All those things turned out to be too ambitious.

Additionally, the depth of interaction with RA and the Firewall was very lacking. I had bigger plans for this, especially planning to have a chance to run into the Firewall upon each algorithm transition once activated, but I just ran out of time.

The logic system of System Maintenance Network was meant to be a lot more advanced. Initially I wanted the AIs to each have various personality sliders (empathy, authority, etc), as it were, and the player would have to rebalance their personalities using the available power to get the correct settings to pass them. Looking back at that idea now, that was very obviously too ambitious.

As I worked on the game, I decided I wanted to change the look of it using the CSS functionality of Twine 2. I hadn't changed my previous Twine 2 projects, Fight a Monster and Grid Game from the default look at all, and I figured I could get the game to feel more like its contents by having a light (#eeeeee) background with big dark text on it.

I wanted to add character symbols for each AI so the player could more easily tell them apart. Normally I am just the graphics guy of our Ludum Dare entries, but given that I was going at it alone for the first time I figured this could be the one bit of clear visual design I could implement. I managed to do this, but I wasn't necessarily satisfied with how some of them turned out. MAA and PAA are a mother (who wakes you up from your sleep) and father (who sets you free in the end), which I was happy with, but RA doesn't necessarily look that much like the Egyptian god, and the style of PEA just doesn't really match the rest. Ideally there would have been a clear single style in which all those personalities were reflected.

To Summarize

I overscoped hard, but there was an acceptable minimal viable product within the broad confines of my concept. I wanted complex story, I settled for simple story; I wanted advanced logic, I settled for simple switches. If I were to go at another project alone, I hope I will remember this lesson: that overscoping isn't necessarily a risk if there's still a satisfactory finished game in there after stripping down its complexity.

All those disappointments aside, I was very pleased that I managed to write a full narrative, start to end. While I've always been drawn to writing, these days I don't write fiction for a hobby at all. The last time I wrote anything complete was many years ago. Sitting down and deciding I needed to do this and then ending up with a story that - judging from the comments on the game - seems to have entertained people, well that just puts a big smile on my face.

Next Ludum Dare I do hope to group up with @daanvanyperen again, but it's nice to know that within these simple confines I can leave my comfort zone and make a cool thing.

Thanks for reading, I hope this was a useful insight.

If you like, you could play CONFINED for a while.

 

The Decision

We're in! And instead of my previous solo jam, we're a team again. @daanvanyperen will be back coding our vague ideas into clear-cut existence, and we're welcoming a brand new member, @astronautmikedexter, to take care of all the sonic parts. As usual, I will occupy myself by putting pixels together; it will be my Lucky Number 13 in a row! Regularly contributing friends might playtest. In short:

The Team

• :computer: @daanvanyperen | coding | twitter, github, website
• :musical_score: @astronautmikedexter | music & audio | YouTube | Twitch | website
• :art: @flaterectomy | graphics | twitter, soundcloud, YouTube, website, portfolio
• :warning: @troop | playtesting | twitch | festive cheer
• :warning: MisterOizo | playtesting | LinkedIn

The Tools

• Artemis ECS framework (check it out!)
• libgdx-artemis-quickstart
• artemis-odb-contrib
• LibGDX, IntellIJ IDEA, Java
• Ableton, Ableton Push 2, Fender Stratocaster, Line 6 Helix, Raspberry Pi
• Photoshop CS6
• Chronolapse

The Wallpaper

Tradition dictates I make a simple wallpaper. I figured I'd offer the choice of cold or warm colors this time.

Both 4k and HD resolution variations available in this Imgur album. :frame_photo:

If you made it this far, thanks for reading! See you around this board and on the LD Discord!